Newsmaker: Shah Rukh Khan

Last year, the Bollywood badshah made headlines when he hugged the Men in Blue under the full glare of TV cameras after India had won the ICC Twenty20 World Cup.

There were murmurs that he was doing it for some free publicity for his mega-budget movie Om Shanti Om. The superstar had vowed then that he would no longer watch a cricket match.

But Shah Rukh Khan need not be apologetic any longer to go to a cricket match. For, he has, what some say, paid an obscene sum to buy the Kolkata team franchisee rights of the Indian Premier League (IPL) — promoted by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). His co-promoters in the $75.09-million deal were his long-time friends — actor Juhi Chawla and filmmaker Jay Mehta.

The BCCI’s first shot with the Twenty20 format in India is an uncharted territory for Shah Rukh, who has been dabbling with a few roles in the Bollywood space — from being a theatre artist to TV actor, filmstar to producer, TV host, and now the owner of an IPL cricket team.

King Khan started his career with theatre and made his first broadcast appearance through a television soap Fauji, and later with Circus, both aired on Doordarshan.

While he is often rated as the best actor in the Indian film industry, his stint as a producer has been disappointing with just three hits of the seven films he has produced.

In 2000, he produced his first Hindi movie Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani with Juhi Chawla under their production banner Dreamz Unlimited.

The film bombed at the box office, followed by another flop Asoka, a big-budget period film based on the emperor, in 2001. The only hit Dreamz Unlimited delivered was in 2003, Chalte Chalte, which featured Rani Mukherjee opposite Khan.

Shah Rukh formed yet another film production house — Red Chillies Entertainment —and the film company churned Main Hoon Na in 2004, which was an instant hit. However, the two films that followed — Kaal and Paheli — in 2005 weren’t crowd pullers.

Two years later, King Khan struck gold by being the first Bollywood producer to have recovered and made profit even before the release of his film Om Shanti Om.

The film, with a budget of Rs 35 crore, starred Khan and newcomer Deepika Padukone, and was sold to Eros International for a whopping Rs 74 crore, according to industry sources.

This apart, Shah Rukh earned another Rs 10 crore approximately from the sale of music rights to T-Series. If that wasn’t enough, Om Shanti Om was the first film to have released its entire music album digitally across platforms for full song downloads (mobile, online and digital media including i-Tunes) across 23 countries.

Business Standard